Lowy Institute report shows trust in the US has tumbled to lowest level since thinktank began polling
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250615183525/https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/16/lowy-poll-2025-china-us-trump-trust
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
What makes the US the most powerful country in the world? It’s our cultural exports, our educational institutions, and our technology. We spent decades handing all our technology over to China, and undermining education. Now Trump has poisoned the American brand for at least a generation.
China is way ahead on building a science and technology culture, and promoting education. The dividends from those investments are already paying off, and they are going to start compounding.
A lot of Americans still think of China as the place to make cheap goods, but their manufacturing sector has benefited from decades of stolen expertise. It turns out there are benefits from having engineers and factory workers in the same location. Faster feedback means faster development. Now the US is falling behind.
Completely agree. Also it’s not really “stolen expertise” as wetern companies and capitalist countries given it away willingly in exchange for cheap manufacturing. They just never expected China to take advantage of it to compete on a global market.
I mostly agree however you are showing some serious racism when you say they “stole” anything. Do typu really believe the people that invented gun powder cannot innovate?
China doesn’t respect intellectual property
Not something worth respecting in the first place
Except it is since Chinese companies take US tech and flood the market with cheaper shittier versions. If you are a startup avoid China like the plague. Even Intel had a bunch of there stuff stolen.
If their versions were actually shittier we wouldn’t be losing as badly as we are, you’re verifiably wrong and it comes off as racist
A US based company may foolishly get a contract with a Chinese manufacturer to make a specific part or product based on a spec. Said manufacturer then takes the designs and starts making them as their own. They often reduce cost by making the product with less material so that it lasts a shorter amount of time. In the tech landscape Chinese manufacturers have been known to steal software for devices without any attribution to the source. It ruins startups and harms the economy and the environment. Not all Chinese companies do this but some due without any reproductions.
It isn’t “racist” as this has nothing to do with race. The core problem is the government of China not enforcing international copyright law. I don’t disagree that copyright can and has been abused in many places. However, it is still needed. Even copyleft depends on copyright.
Cool story, can’t help noticing it’s entirely unsubstantiated though. Again, if Chinese manifacturing quality was actually that much lower consistently than American manifacturing we wouldn’t be losing.
A lot of Americans still think of China as the place to make cheap goods, but their manufacturing sector has benefited from decades of stolen expertise.
I listened to a podcast (Dithering; it’s subscription based) talking about a book about Apple’s manufacturing operations in China. The distinction was that other companies guarded because their techniques would be stolen, whereas Apple focused on “we’re gonna teach you to do this,” which then proliferated to other companies. We wouldn’t have semi-affordable (depending on your situation) iPhones otherwise. They be impossible to build at scale. Really eye opening.
The ep was the second one last week, if you wanna listen.
We wouldn’t have semi-affordable (depending on your situation) iPhones otherwise. They be impossible to build at scale. Really eye opening.
Yes we would, they’d just have to lower their ridiculously high profit margins: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/30/apples-gross-margin-hits-record-as-services-business-keeps-growing.html
For many years in the iPhone era, Apple’s gross margin would predictably come in at between 38% and 39%, reflecting the company’s tight grip over its supply chain and its pricing power in the market.
Apple’s huge profit margins are only possible because of the scale of their operations in China. They’re moving to India and Vietnam. It remains to be seen how that will work out. China has been building expertise in manufacturing for decades. My statement stands.
The biggest problem with China is that they are Authoritarian.
That is in fact their greatest strength and the primary reason why our usual strategies for undermining our political & economic rivals don’t work on them. Sitting back and allowing shit to fall apart because “freedom” is moronic, just look at what the US has turned into for a perfect example.
What are your “cultural exports”?
I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but in Serbia 90% of TV shows and movies are American, and generally people watch primarily American movies/series online and in cinemas. Most people listen to American music and use English words in daily conversation. Most are familiar with things like 9/11, Vietnam, 4th of July, Woodstock, hippies etc.
A lot of younger people are more familiar with American history, topics, movies and music than their own culture. I’m not saying it’s good, but Americans have an undeniably strong cultural influence, at least in Europe.
What did you write this comment on?
I’m gonna skip a step…Nothing invented by USAian, no I won’t be elaborating or entertaining your delusions with further discussion. Search engines are your friend.
Movies, fast food chains, clothing chains, etc. The American brand and lifestyle that goes with it. Not exactly the greatest cultural achievements of all time, but they brought in cash.
Capitalism isn’t culture.
Correct, the clothes and movies and music are the culture
Can you name an aspect that is USA specific?
Are you completely culturally illiterate?
No. Are you?
China has already successfully destroyed manufacturing in most Pacific “first world” countries by undercutting us.
The fact that US, Australian, Japanese, Korean and New Zealand manufacturers were so ready to outsource to China in the first place, just to save a few cents in the dollar is how they got us.
Sounds more like “we got us” to me. It’s our system and our philosophies that made those pennies so precious.
majority of australians think that afternoon will follow morning
Sure, China will rise and then it will fall under its own weight just like every empire before it.
Nobody currently alive will live to see it
Aren’t they already?
There was a moment around the year 2000 when this might have been the case but China’s demographics and unwillingness to permit meaningful immigration will see a decline of 20-25% of their working age population over the next 30 years due to a plummeting fertility rate. This phenomenon isn’t unique to China, but China is one of the hardest hit for many reasons. A decline of hundreds of millions of workers is going to destroy their economy - especially with such a large elderly population set to retire. There is no chance they fully transition to a services based economy by then. Not even close. They still have hundreds of millions of citizens living subsistence farming lifestyles.
Now compound this with all of the structural issues like command and control policies which destroy whole industries because the dictator in charge has a mood swing, a property bubble from which they will never recover, an economy built on unnecessary public spending, and an educational system which continues to emphasise blind obedience over individualism, and I think it very difficult to believe China becomes the most “powerful” country by 2035.
China has proven itself able to change drastically and quickly. High speed rail and renewable energy. Both massive undertakings tackling massive problems for China and both done far faster and on a much larger scale than anywhere else. If there’s one country I actually trust to be proactive about securing its future, it’s China. I’ll take the wait and see approach to the supposed imminent demographic collapse
I agree that authoritarian governments have more latitude than democracies. The CCP displaced up to two million people when it built the The Three Gorges Dam. There was no recourse. No ability to object. People who had lived on the land for generations were simply told to leave. Some were lucky to be given meagre government apartments to live in elsewhere, but that was it. It’s much easier to build large infrastructure projects when you don’t have to worry about pesky things like property laws, health and safety, and human rights.
If your argument is that authoritarianism will win over democracy in the long term, it’s an interesting debate. Most of human history was some form of authoritarianism. Some form of might makes right. There have been small democratic experiements in history (see Greece), but modern democracy is a relatively new experiment. I hope it succeeds, because I like it a lot more than the alternatives.
My argument is that I don’t think the demographic collapse will be as devastating as you made it out to be. Did you even read my comment?
The question is, will they decline more than their competitors? Right now i think the US will decline a lot more a lot faster. And Russia will likely not even be around.
